All posts tagged "boxee box"

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

"Initially announced back in November, this tool pipes coaxial signals through to a user's Boxee Box, allowing users to connect their antennas to a Box and stream select channels at no monthly fee. The system also features Facebook integration, allowing you to see what shows your friends are watching, with their profiles displayed under each show within the sidebar menu."

You should be able to find this new Boxee product in stores in the next few days. It will set you back $50 (US), but it does offer some impressive new functionality. Check out the Read link for a demo video.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

"Boxee Box owners will soon be able to watch live television through the device, with the help of a special USB dongle that functions as a tuner for free over-the-air HD TV signals."

Owners of the Boxee Box will soon get an update that will enable their devices to capture over the air HDTV feeds with a special USB dongle. This update will also let the Boxee Box access unencrypted basic cable TV feeds.

Availability of the update has not yet been announced but it is expected to be right around the corner.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

"It doesn't take a genius to appreciate the benefits of the new LG Smart TV Upgrader. With one little black box you can turn your current TV into a Web browsing, movie streaming, media sharing machine. Enjoy surfing the Internet from the comfort of your couch, check your FacebookTM and TwitterTM feeds on your flat-screen display and watch videos stored on your computer's hard drive without leaving the living room. The LG Smart TV Upgrader is all you need to make your TV a Smart TV, with all the online features of the latest models. If that's not brilliant, we don't know what is."

I heard about the LG SmartTV Upgrader ST600 during CES, and it looks like it's here - Best Buy in Canada is selling it for $149.99 CAD. From the looks of the specs and what it can do, it's much more sophisticated than your typical media streaming device - it's sort of like a Boxee Box in some ways (and about $50 cheaper to boot). It supports a wide variety of video file formats (MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, DivXHD, MKV, TS TP, M4V, WMV) though I don't see ISO files on that list, which pretty much kills it for me. However, with a Web browser and a growing selection of applications, this could be just the ticket for making that TV of yours just a bit smarter.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

"I received a Boxee review unit to play around with, and I have to say, I really like it. Quite a bit more than our colleagues at Gizmodo, for sure, because I enjoy a lot of the non-mainstream web content, dig the remote and the box's look, and absolutely adore the "Friends" menu that lines up all the videos my Twitter and Facebook contacts linked for easy watching."

The Boxee Box is one of many streaming solutions in a very crowded market. Still, it stands out as one of the best with a slick interface and support for a lot of stuff you can find online. But why buy when you can build? Earn some Geek cred and make your own HTPC from scratch. Well, it is not always that easy, and at $200, the Boxee Box is hard to compete with. A roll-your-own solution does offer flexibility, but it can also mean spending a few more hours to a few more days setting everything up and dealing with potential, though probably unlikely, hardware conflicts. To be honest, while LifeHacker promotes the do it yourself ethos, I can see the huge temptation that buying an already built solution offers. Without any hassles or problems, you can spend your time watching movies, instead of install wizards.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

"It's a little strange that the Boxee Box by D-Link feels like a late entrant in this year's crowded smart TV market -- the core Boxee software has been around forever, and the Box itself was announced way back in January at CES. But a platform switch from NVIDIA's Tegra 2 chip to Intel's Atom-based CE4100 platform cost Boxee and D-Link valuable time, while the Boxee software went through a dramatic UI transformation from the beta to 1.0. What's more, Boxee's gone from being an upstart rock'n'roll rebel to a legit market player, with a Netflix deal on the books and -- wonder of wonders -- an agreement to bring Hulu Plus to the Boxee Box sometime next year. That's a lot of changes, and, quite frankly, a lot of hype -- Boxee's dedicated fans are expecting the small company and its asymmetrical Box to show up no less than Apple and Google. So have Boxee CEO Avner Ronen and company pulled it off?"

Engadget has put the Boxee Box through its paces, and the end result is mixed: they feel it's the most capable media streamer on the market, with strong codec (file format) support, but at the moment it's more of a rough draft than a finished product. I've had one for a bit over a week now, and feel similarly - it's an extremely powerful product with lots of potential, but out of the box there are more than a few glitches. Read more...

Thursday, November 11, 2010

"The Boxee Box is a cubist deviation from the traditionally rectangular set-top box. The oddly-shaped form factor forced D-Link to make the internals equally odd. But that also made it super fun to take apart!"

iFixit has a cool teardown of the Boxee Box - check out that heatsink! That's one crazy-huge heatsink for such a small device...

My Boxee Box is on it's way to me now - I can't wait! The new UI looks pretty slick.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

"The Boxee Box announced at the 2010 CES was based on the Tegra 2. In a post made on my personal blog right after the CES announcement, I had expressed my reservations on how it would be foolhardy to expect the same sort of performance from an app-processor based device as what one would expect from a dedicated media streamer or HTPC. Just as suspected, Boxee had to replace Tegra 2 with a much more powerful SoC. After evaluating many solutions, Boxee and D-Link decided to choose the Atom based Intel CE4100 for the Boxee Box."

A great article on the Boxee Box and how the switch from NVIDIA's Tegra 2 chip to the Intel CE4100 will enable the Boxee Box to really deliver on a high-quality experience in terms of hardware-assisted playback of HD video content. Will the software measure up? My Magic 8 Ball says "It's looking likely". Let's hope that's the case!

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Last week, I placed a pre-order for a Boxee Box (you can too via this handy pre-order link!). Why? Well, I've been watching the network/local media player space evolve over the past few years, and I've yet to implement any of them. I've seen two basic types of devices:

Devices that offer superior technical capabilities in terms of files (ISO rips, etc.) and formats supported (every video codec under the sun), but lack any semblance of true usability, often featuring awful user interface, painful performance, or both. I'd put most of the dedicated network media players in this camp; Popcorn Hour, efforts from Seagate, Western Digital, Asus, etc.

Devices that offer superior user interface and usability, but lack broad technical abilities; they're often limited in terms of file types (no ISO support), codecs, and are very mainstream in their support of content. I'd put Windows Media Center, and anything based on that (Media Center Extenders), in this category along with the Xbox 360, Apple TV, etc.

I've wanted a device that does both, and it looks like the Boxee Box may be the closest I've come so far. I've messed around with several of these devices over the years; I even bought an Acer Aspire Revo and installed XBMC on it in the hopes that I'd finally be able to do what I wanted. It failed. Read more...

Thursday, June 17, 2010

"Avner Ronen has posted a blog entry stating that the Boxee Box from D-Link will be available this November. He attributes the delay to wanting to provide 1080p HD video playback from the web and local network shares, hardware acceleration support via Flash 10.1, and new to the mix... a TV web browser (most likely in an effort to compete with Google TV). Target price: "just under $200.""

If you were hoping to have your hands on the Boxee Box which was promised Q2 2010, then you'll have to wait a little bit longer. Boxee admitted on their blog that the 'time-frame proved overly ambitious' and that they will now be releasing it in November. A good guess is that one of the reasons for delay was the wait for the latest version of flash to be released, but with Google rumoured to be releasing their new TV box around the same time, that delay could hurt.